


Enough to Go By

by jusrecht



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Background Canon Relationship, Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spoilers, but not entirely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 18:53:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18629224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: Post-Endgame fic. Spoilers abound."The problem, for him, has never been about the doing it, finding that line between can or can’t. It’s the living with the consequences afterwards."





	Enough to Go By

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Enough to Go By 足以离去](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641005) by [asadeseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asadeseki/pseuds/asadeseki)



> Seems like a post-Endgame fic is pretty much mandatory or you won't move on, period.
> 
> Title is a song by Vienna Teng.

 

“So I don’t usually do things like this.”

 

Stephen’s eyes snap open. _No,_ he thinks, heart a painful hammer in his chest. _Impossible_. He blinks, eyes chasing the darkness away. He’s never even dreamt of something like this happening, his mind constrained by too harsh logic and too much knowledge. Each realm has its own rules. Some things just do not happen in this one, and dead people coming back to life is one of them.

 

And yet, sitting in the opposite chair, facing him, is Tony Stark.

 

Or some apparition of him, at least. He doesn’t look solid enough to be real—and that observation is all it takes to prick any kind of absurd hope starting to balloon in Stephen. But the face, the expression that sits on that face, the manner with which he carries himself, everything is unquestionably Tony’s.

 

For a while, Stephen only sits there, quietly basking in the illusion.

 

“You know, consoling people,” the apparition continues in the absence of any reply from Stephen. “Cheering them up, trying to make them feel better, all that stuff.”

 

“No,” Stephen finally says, pushing the word out of his dry mouth. He sits up a little straighter. His mind is regaining its rational footing, and that means moving on to the next obvious possibility. This can be an enemy machination. He’s weak right now, his control in shambles, his grip on various nuances of realities uncertain. To have ‘Tony’ appear in front of him—not even clad in the Iron Man armour, but in the track suit he wore on the day they met, so human and so very _alive_ —even Stephen has to admit it’s a good strategy to catch him off guard.

 

Before he can decide on a course of action, however, the apparition has spoken again. “Do you have any idea why I’m here?”

 

“I don’t even know what you are,” he answers, truthful despite himself.

 

It earns him a wry smile. “Fair enough. I can’t answer that either, but to put it briefly, I’m here to shout some sense into you. And it’s ‘shout’ only because I can’t seem to touch you—because if I could, trust me, I’d go with a punch, or at least a kick.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“ _Ah_?” ‘Tony’ crosses his arms, frowning. “What does that mean, ‘ah’? Are you telling me that you’ve been expecting this to happen?”

 

“Not exactly.” Stephen pauses. His doubts are being reduced one by one, slowly but surely, but to dismiss them all while he can barely accept the concepts of ‘Tony’ and ‘here’ existing together is another matter entirely. “It’s the logistics that baffle me.”

 

Tony rolls his eyes. “Of course. Fine. If you must know, then yes, my being here does break at least a million rules of the universe. But there’s always a loophole for the really important things in life and this is no exception. One, this place isn’t exactly ordinary. It’s brimming with magic, and what is magic if not a way to cheat? Two, I’d been here before, touching things I shouldn’t have touched. Turns out it’s all the connection you need. Pretty thin, but it exists, so here I am.”

 

It answers the how and explains the track suit. It doesn’t, however, answer the rest.

 

“But why? Who’d go into so much trouble just to do this?”

 

Tony raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious? Some of the higher-ups are concerned that the person they’ve set to be the Earth’s grand wizard seems to have flaked out.”

 

“I’m not flaking out,” Stephen murmurs automatically.

 

“No? Prove it.” Tony leans forward, palm outstretched. “Touch me.”

 

Stephen curbs a sudden instinct to recoil. “I can’t,” he objects, frowning to hide the ice that grips his heart. “I don’t even know where you are—in which plane out of the infinite number out there.”

 

“The Sorcerer Supreme doesn’t need that information.”

 

“Then maybe I’m not one.”

 

“And you call that not flaking out?”

 

Stephen snorts. Tony smirks, wiggling his fingers. “Come on, Doc. Just the tip of the finger. Like E.T.”

 

It’s pure selfishness that finally makes Stephen raise his hand, slowly, degree by scant degree. Focus is difficult, but the problem, for him, has never been about the doing it, finding that line between can or can’t. It’s the living with the consequences afterwards. He was the one who had guided, nudged, pushed Tony Stark to his death; the one who had robbed him of the life he deserved; who had made his wife a widow, his daughter fatherless.

 

Living with that knowledge turns out to be harder than he thought.

 

Even as he strives for focus, Srephen doesn’t know what he expects. In theory, the mechanism is simple enough. He has done it a thousand times, weaving through realms to pluck strands of energy and translate them into the four-dimensional space as understood by his human brain. Tony Stark is dead. He is not here _,_ will not be here ever again, and yet Stephen reaches out—and _touches._

 

Stephen doesn’t break. He shatters, slowly, cracks spiderwebbing across ice. The pressure behind his eyes builds until tears burn past and slide down his cheeks. The lump in his throat unravels, thread by thread, revealing the words tightly wrapped inside—shrivelled, silent, dead, should be, except he can finally say them now to the one person he wants to hear them.

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

Tony’s face is lit up with amusement, but his eyes are soft. “Glad to get that off your chest there, Doc?”

 

Stephen doesn’t expect to laugh, but he does, the sound wet and embarrassing. His head already feels several times lighter. The warmth under his fingers seeps, the warmth of a living person, of _Tony_ , and when he tries to wrap his hand around it, it doesn’t disappear. He is holding Tony’s hand.

 

“You’re forgiven, by the way,” Tony continues, gentle in a way that makes Stephen’s heart clench. “So no beating yourself over this again, alright? It’s seriously an insult. You thought it was all your fault? Tough, Doc. I was the one who made the decision to take the stones. It was my own free will, thank you very much.”

 

“Free will is an illusion,” Stephen says, just for the sake of it.

 

“Ah, but in your world, illusions may as well be truths, right?” Tony shoots back with a grin. “Infinite possibilities. In the end, everything is relative.”

 

Stephen cannot help an incredulous smile. “What are you learning over there?”

 

“Can’t tell you yet.” Tony shakes his head, eyes brilliant, a teasing smile on his lips. Warmth flood Stephen’s chest. This is the Tony Stark he knows—always seeking for answers no matter when, where, in what existence. “Sorry, but not even you grand wizards are exempt. You’re still going to die someday in the future.”

 

“That’s actually a relief,” Stephen says truthfully.

 

“Exactly,” Tony says, holding his gaze, and Stephen understands what he’s left unsaid. Death is not the tragedy he thinks it is. The loss is real. The role he took in it is true. It will forever be branded in his soul, the price he has to pay, but the thought of it no longer suffocates. Tony has taken the worst of it, this beautiful, _beautiful_ man Stephen has learned to love through fourteen million lifetimes.

 

Now it’s Stephen’s turn to let him go.

 

“There is something I want to tell you,” he says quietly, holding to this hand he has to let go of soon. “But you already know, don’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Tony says. He doesn’t look away, or try to brush it off with a smile, or hide behind a quick jest. This is acceptance, and Stephen feels himself smile.

 

“Good. Alright.”

 

“That, by the way, is how they know you’re the right person for the job,” Tony continues, eyes fixed on him. “You made the right choice. Half the universe instead of one person, even though it was a person who mattered to you.”

 

“The word is ‘love’,” Stephen tells him. “A person I love.”

 

Tony smiles then, and brings his trembling hand to his lips. The touch is as light as a butterfly’s kiss. “That’s why, thank you.”

 

Stephen stares at him, heart breaking all over again. “For being someone with no heart?”

 

Tony snorts. “For being strong. Brave. Selfless. Amazing. Are you fishing for compliments?”

 

“For being stupid too.”

 

“Maybe.” A grin flashes. “Can’t have you hoarding just the nice stuffs. Must keep it in balance, after all.”

 

Stephen laughs again. It feels like he has laughed more in the last five minutes than he had in a lifetime.

 

“Thank you.” This time, it’s his turn to kiss Tony’s hand, his pointed knuckles and mechanic fingers. He can already feel him slipping, fragmenting. This will be their last.

 

“I promise,” he says, heart swelling, breath stuttering—and then Tony is gone, leaving an imprint of his smile on Stephen’s soul.

 

He spends the next few hours crying, cradling the phantom warmth left around his trembling fingers.

 

Then he rises, and he is once more the Sorcerer Supreme.

 

_**End** _

 

**Author's Note:**

> My love letter to my favourite man in MCU. Thank you for everything, Tony Stark.


End file.
